n ill . 1 - Comhaltas Archive

I would like to con~ratulate Joe O'Siorain
in Treoir Iml. 33 uimhir 2001 No. 79000'tx.
for his wonderful article - "Whither the
Traditional Arts of Ireland".
I don't believe that I am alone in ali~nin~
myself with so many of his critical
reflections of the Arts Council. Like life
support systems provided by nature, the
cultural traditions of people everywhere
have never been ~iven the honour and
~ratitude they deserve by the modern
and post modern world. On the contrary,
the extin~ushment of tradition is ~eneral
synonymous with the onward march of
modernism.
Unfortunately, it is too often for~otten that
had cd: not emer~ed in Ireland half a
century a~o what is now a rich livin~
tradition would have become yet another
curiosity in some museum or archive and
as AK. Coomaraswamy has so very well
said: the art forms of peoples in museums
are no more then the funerary rites of what
was once a livin~ and relevant tradition.
Arts departments are ~enerally not the
friends of tradition, they have always
been and still are a vehicle for "displays
of bour~eois elitism." The primary source
of their "inspiration" has always come
from an overarchin~ desire to be avante­
~arde and individualistic. The latter
always shows an implicit hatred of
traditional ~enres and is almost always
hostile to them.
The manifest absence of fundin~ for the
traditional arts and abundance offunds
available for the ballet and opera for
example arises out of a belief in the
innate superiority of the latter and this
belief is in part a consequence of the
equally false ideas of hi~h and low
culture: ideas that ~o hand in hand with
so many other modern aberrations. I
should point out, thou~h, that whilst I
believe I share a common purpose with
the author Joe O'Siorain I nonetheless
find myself just a little at variance with
some notions.
Defenders of traditional cultures must
~uard a~ainst bein~ drawn into
employin~ a lan~ua~e that in its nature
diminishes the plenary position of the
traditional. To demolish notions of hi~h
and low cultures I accept without
reservation primarily because low culture
is usually reserved for traditional ~enres
and hi~h culture for ballet and opera and
the like. But let me say without hesitation
that I refute outri~ht the assertion that
there " are no criteria which elevated one
art form over another or jud~ed one
cultural activity superior to another."
(p.50). So many traditional peoples, their
lan~ua~es and their arts and crafts have
passed into oblivion in the wake of just
such " democracy". It is a misplaced
ma~nanimity and it is so often used as a
smoke screen by people who at bottom
so not believe in it for a sin~le moment;
the better to serve their own purposes.
It has to be insisted on that the very word
traditional will lose all its relevance if it is
placed alon~side anythin~ whatever with
no reco~nition of a quality that sets it
apart. The point I wish to make here is; if
it is accepted in advance that traditional
expression is the fruit of a particular
ethnic ~enius then the very primacy of
the tradition must be due to the fact that
it is imbued with criteria and therefore
values of a pre-eminent nature. The
stamp of a ~iven tradition does not fill the
space-time of a people arbitrarily. It is
there in its particular mode because it
must be there and not simply because it
mi~ht or could be there and this is what
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